White House Pushes Tech Industry to Shut Down Market for Abusive AI Deepfakes

Arati Prabhakar, left photo, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Jennifer Klein, Director of the White House Gender Policy Council, are shown in 2023 file photos. Klein and Prabhakar are co-authors of a Thursday announcement calling on the tech industry and financial institutions to commit to new measures to curb the creation of AI-generated nonconsensual sexual imagery. (AP Photo, file)
Arati Prabhakar, left photo, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Jennifer Klein, Director of the White House Gender Policy Council, are shown in 2023 file photos. Klein and Prabhakar are co-authors of a Thursday announcement calling on the tech industry and financial institutions to commit to new measures to curb the creation of AI-generated nonconsensual sexual imagery. (AP Photo, file)
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White House Pushes Tech Industry to Shut Down Market for Abusive AI Deepfakes

Arati Prabhakar, left photo, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Jennifer Klein, Director of the White House Gender Policy Council, are shown in 2023 file photos. Klein and Prabhakar are co-authors of a Thursday announcement calling on the tech industry and financial institutions to commit to new measures to curb the creation of AI-generated nonconsensual sexual imagery. (AP Photo, file)
Arati Prabhakar, left photo, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Jennifer Klein, Director of the White House Gender Policy Council, are shown in 2023 file photos. Klein and Prabhakar are co-authors of a Thursday announcement calling on the tech industry and financial institutions to commit to new measures to curb the creation of AI-generated nonconsensual sexual imagery. (AP Photo, file)

President Joe Biden's administration is pushing the tech industry and financial institutions to shut down a growing market of abusive sexual images made with artificial intelligence technology.

New generative AI tools have made it easy to transform someone's likeness into a sexually explicit AI deepfake and share those realistic images across chatrooms or social media. The victims — be they celebrities or children — have little recourse to stop it, The AP reported.

The White House is putting out a call Thursday looking for voluntary cooperation from companies in the absence of federal legislation. By committing to a set of specific measures, officials hope the private sector can curb the creation, spread and monetization of such nonconsensual AI images, including explicit images of children.

“As generative AI broke on the scene, everyone was speculating about where the first real harms would come. And I think we have the answer,” said Biden's chief science adviser Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy.

She described to The Associated Press a “phenomenal acceleration” of nonconsensual imagery fueled by AI tools and largely targeting women and girls in a way that can upend their lives.

“We’ve seen an acceleration because of generative AI that’s moving really fast. And the fastest thing that can happen is for companies to step up and take responsibility.”

A document shared with AP ahead of its Thursday release calls for action from not just AI developers but payment processors, financial institutions, cloud computing providers, search engines and the gatekeepers — namely Apple and Google — that control what makes it onto mobile app stores.

The private sector should step up to “disrupt the monetization” of image-based sexual abuse, restricting payment access particularly to sites that advertise explicit images of minors, the administration said.

Prabhakar said many payment platforms and financial institutions already say that they won't support the kinds of businesses promoting abusive imagery.

“But sometimes it’s not enforced; sometimes they don’t have those terms of service,” she said. “And so that’s an example of something that could be done much more rigorously.”

Cloud service providers and mobile app stores could also “curb web services and mobile applications that are marketed for the purpose of creating or altering sexual images without individuals’ consent," the document says.

And whether it is AI-generated or a real nude photo put on the internet, survivors should more easily be able to get online platforms to remove them.

The most widely known victim of deepfake images is Taylor Swift, whose ardent fanbase fought back in January when abusive AI-generated images of the singer-songwriter began circulating on social media. Microsoft promised to strengthen its safeguards after some of the Swift images were traced to its AI visual design tool.

A growing number of schools in the US and elsewhere are also grappling with AI-generated deepfake photos depicting their students. In some cases, fellow teenagers were found to be creating AI-manipulated images and sharing them with classmates.



Volkswagen Workers to Go on Warning Strikes Across Germany

The Volkswagen logo is displayed on the Volkswagen power plant on the day when Volkswagen AG and the industrial union IG Metall started talks over a new labor agreement for six of its German plants, in Wolfsburg, Germany, September 25, 2024. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo
The Volkswagen logo is displayed on the Volkswagen power plant on the day when Volkswagen AG and the industrial union IG Metall started talks over a new labor agreement for six of its German plants, in Wolfsburg, Germany, September 25, 2024. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo
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Volkswagen Workers to Go on Warning Strikes Across Germany

The Volkswagen logo is displayed on the Volkswagen power plant on the day when Volkswagen AG and the industrial union IG Metall started talks over a new labor agreement for six of its German plants, in Wolfsburg, Germany, September 25, 2024. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo
The Volkswagen logo is displayed on the Volkswagen power plant on the day when Volkswagen AG and the industrial union IG Metall started talks over a new labor agreement for six of its German plants, in Wolfsburg, Germany, September 25, 2024. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo

Volkswagen workers will go on warning strikes on Monday at plants across Germany, labor union IG Metall said, marking the first large-scale walkouts at Volkswagen's domestic operations since 2018.

The start of the strikes represents a further escalation of a dispute between Europe's top carmaker and its workers over mass layoffs, pay cuts and possible plant closures - drastic measures the company says it cannot rule out in the face of Chinese competition and cooling consumer demand.

Labor representatives at VW had on Nov. 22 voted for limited strikes at German operations from early December after talks over wages and plant closures failed to achieve a breakthrough, Reuters reported.

"If necessary, this will be the toughest collective bargaining battle Volkswagen has ever seen," IG Metall negotiator Thorsten Groeger said in a statement.

The carmaker said it continues to rely on constructive dialogue to find a sustainable solution.

"Volkswagen respects the right of employees to take part in a warning strike," a spokesperson said in reply to the union's announcement, adding that the company had taken steps in advance to ensure a basic level of supplies to customers and minimise the impact of the strike.

Warning strikes in Germany usually last from a few hours.

The union had last week proposed measures it said would save 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion), including forgoing bonuses for 2025 and 2026, which Europe's top carmaker dismissed.

Volkswagen has demanded a 10% wage cut, arguing it needs to slash costs and boost profit to defend market share in the face of cheap competition from China and a drop in European car demand.

The company is threatening to close plants in Germany for the first time in its 87-year history.

"Volkswagen has set fire to our collective agreements and instead of extinguishing this fire in three collective bargaining sessions, the management board is throwing open barrels of petrol into it," Groeger said.

An agreement not to stage walkouts had ended on Saturday, IG Metall said, enabling workers to carry out warning strikes from Sunday across VW AG's German plants.

"Warning strikes will start at all plants from Monday. How long and how intensive this confrontation needs to be is Volkswagen's responsibility at the negotiating table," Groeger said.

Labor representatives and management will meet again on Dec. 9 to carry on negotiations over a new labor agreement for workers at the German business - VW AG - with unions vowing to resist any proposals that do not provide a long-term plan for every VW plant.